


How Big You Can Love

by mizdiz



Category: The Walking Dead & Related Fandoms, The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, First Time, Hurt/Comfort, One Shot, Season/Series 10, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-25
Updated: 2020-02-25
Packaged: 2021-02-27 21:48:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,600
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22892785
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mizdiz/pseuds/mizdiz
Summary: "It’s only when you’re close to death that you realize just how big you’re able to love."spoilers up to s10e10
Relationships: Daryl Dixon/Carol Peletier
Comments: 3
Kudos: 81





	How Big You Can Love

It’s only when you’re close to death that you realize just how big you’re able to love. The magnitude of it all; the absolute infinite capabilities of your heart. They say that everyone who’s ever jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge and survived regretted it the moment their feet left solid ground. There’s always love inside—of family, of yourself, of life—but darkness likes to disguise it as pain and grief and hatred. It’s only during the fall that its true face reemerges. You can only really know yourself and your ability to love when you’re about to die.

And it’s not that Daryl ever forgot that he loved her. Quite the contrary, in fact. His whole life lately has revolved around a continuous push-and-pull game, where she tugs herself one way, and he tugs her right on back. But that’s the thing—he’s been so preoccupied with keeping her grounded that he’s put aside the reason he’s doing it in the first place. 

Now that he’s dying, though? Now he remembers. 

Face beaten to a pulp, his leg gushing out more blood than he can stem with the pressure of his hand, Daryl lies on the floor of some rundown dusty shop that has been cleaned out for years, and feels the vastness of his love for her. 

When he closes his swollen eyelids he sees her face, smiling the way she used to in the beginning, with an unwavering kindness that he hadn’t been used to and didn’t know how to comprehend. On his bruised and battered shoulder he feels the phantom weight of her head resting on it, and the squeeze of her fingers around his bicep.

On the other side of the wall, Alpha—the monster who broke Carol’s final tether and made him lose his grip on her—is droning on about the meaning of it all. She’s nearly dead, too, and remembering just how much she loves power. But Daryl isn’t listening. He isn’t here, not really. His heart is still beating, but he’s transcended his body, existing only where his memories of her lie. 

They’re right when they say that your life flashes before your eyes, because she is his whole world.

He should have told her that. 

Should have chanted it like a mantra to her every day.

It was never the right time, and now there’s no time left. Funny thing, time. Always keeps you guessing.

At least he’s not afraid. Carol was the first to teach him that letting people in can be safe, and she’s keeping him safe now, in his final moments. 

Daryl thinks someone is saying his name; thinks there may be footsteps circling around his dilapidated form. He can’t be bothered to make heads or tails of it, though.

He’s too busy remembering how big he’s able to love.

*

Lydia’s tourniquet saved his life, the clever girl. He’s proud of her. Not because she helped him. He’s certainly grateful, but he’s proud because she has developed a love of others instead a love of control like her mother, and he knows exactly how difficult that is when someone is trying to literally beat the compassion out of you.

He’s home in Alexandria, holed up in the infirmary that has yet to recover from the giant hole Siddiq left in his wake. Trainees fuss over him with unskilled hands—people who had observed the late doctor’s handiwork, or came into the community with rusty medical knowledge from CNA jobs in their 20s, or what have you. It’s a testament to how worn down he is that he doesn’t care that he’s confined to a bed and at the whim of other people’s touch. He spends most of his time sleeping, trying to heal his battered body that is unfortunately much too familiar with this song and dance.

In his moments of lucidity, however, in between the aches and pains, he remembers how big he loves her, and he wants to ask everyone who walks by if they’ve seen her, but he’s afraid of the answer. With how they left things, and with her tendency for running, he doesn’t want to know where she ended up after he left her at the collapsed entrance of that godforsaken cave.

At night, though, he thinks he feels her thin fingers lacing between his thick ones, entwining them with a gentle squeeze. He thinks he feels his hair being brushed back, and maybe even lips pressing against his forehead. He thinks he hears soft reassurances whispered in his ear.

But then he wakes up, and no one is ever there.

*

It takes a full week for them to let him go home. A week. Seven days. And truth be told, they probably would have kept him longer, except he finally loses his patience, and gets right up on both feet, ignoring the throb in his injured leg, and walks right out the door.

He gets it. There’s a war on the horizon, and Michonne is out at sea somewhere, Hilltop has two of their members lost underground, not to mention he still hasn’t asked about Carol, and at the end of the day, no matter how well-meaning everyone is, or how concerned they are about his well-being, he knows that, first and foremost, at least right now, he’s an asset they can’t afford to lose.

He’s not gonna take it personal.

But he’s also not staying in that fucking infirmary a second longer. 

When he gets home the house is quiet, and usually quiet doesn’t bother him, but today it feels exceptionally lonely. He’s grown accustomed to the sound of RJ running around playing, with Lil’ Asskicker at his heels, but they’re with a neighbor right now. Lydia is no longer confining herself to the brig, but she’s still not feeling welcome, and comes and goes, checking on him before disappearing back out into the forest, and Daryl, who has done the exact same thing on more than one occasion, would be a hypocrite to ask her to say in one place. But even his dog isn’t here. He’s with a neighbor too. Daryl’s all alone in this big empty house.

Or at least he assumes he is. 

Leaning against the front door, shifting his weight off of his bad leg, his eyes wander up the stairs, and it takes him a good five minutes to decide if it’s time to answer the question he’s been dreading asking since the moment he got through the Alexandrian gates. 

He starts up the stairs, slowly, still sore, and they creak under his weight. He gets to the top and comes face to face with the entrance to her room and finds the door cracked open. Swallowing, he takes those last few steps and nudges it the rest of the way open with the palm of his hand. 

There’s a duffel bag. 

It’s lying open on the bed, and he can see some clothes thrown in haphazardly, and the hilt of a knife. Around the room, dresser drawers are pulled out, and belongings are scattered on the ground. She’s getting ready to run, and his stomach twists.

Entering the room, he surveys the chaos around him. He doesn’t know where she went, but assumes she’ll be back soon to finish her packing job and hit the road. Was she even going to say goodbye? 

A white-hot rage washes over him, because why the fuck does it always have to go this way? It’s always something; always him running to be by himself, or her running from herself. The two of them never learned how to sit still, but he’s sick of it. He loves her too big to lose her again.

He starts putting her things back where they belong; takes out each item of clothing from the duffel bag one-by-one, folding them neatly and laying them in the dresser drawers. Unsteady on his feet, he fights through his pain to reach down and clean up the floor. A lot of it is junk—a pair of socks with holes in the heels and toe, a lighter with no juice left, a pocket mirror with a jagged crack down the middle—but some of it is the exact opposite. Some of the stuff on the ground are treasured items thrown around in anger, like a birthday card from Henry, a drawing of Sophia made by Jadis, and several letters Daryl wrote her during her time out at sea that he didn’t realize she had kept.

He treats these items with care—uncrumpling the corners of aged paper and blowing dust off—before setting them gingerly down in a neat pile on her table. Then, when the room is no longer in disarray, Daryl takes a seat on the edge of her bed and waits.

It’s about fifteen minutes later, give or take, when she returns. She steps into her room and then stills like a statue at the sight of him, not unlike she had the day he came to confront her in that little house on the border of the Kingdom. She takes stock of her tidied up space. With a weak groan, she presses the base of her palms to her eyes.

“Don’t do this,” she says. “Just go.”

“No,” Daryl says simply, and she lets her arms fall, hanging limp at her sides. There are tears sliding down her cheeks but her face is stoic.

“I only stayed to make sure you were okay,” she says. “Clearly you are, so now you can let me go.”

“No,” Daryl says again, not unkindly or harshly, but with an air of finality that she chooses to ignore.

“Look at what I’ve done, Daryl,” she yells then. He doesn’t flinch. “I trapped two of our own. I’ve essentially brought the Whisperers to our front doorstep. I almost got you killed, for Christ’s sake, you almost  _ died _ , and it would have been my fault, and I have a lot of blood on my hands, Daryl, but if I had  _ yours _ ? I’d rather die and go straight to hell.”

“I’m alive,” Daryl says. 

“But you almost weren’t.”

“But I  _ am _ .”

“But not everyone is. Not everyone will be, once this war is underway. Anyone around me has the risk of becoming collateral damage.”

“Then you have to get yourself under control.”

“I  _ can’t _ .”

“Yes you can.”

“How?”

“By  _ talking to me, _ Carol, like I’ve said all along.”

Carol laughs bitterly, blinking up at the ceiling and shaking her head. 

“The fuck do you want me to say, Daryl?” she asks, eyes trained above her at nothing. “Do you want me to say it hurts that my son’s head was put on a pike? That the woman who did it is still walking around on this Earth without any consequences? Yeah, it fucking hurts.” She looks at him then, with a leveled glare. “Do you want me to say that the only good thing that came out of two decades of abuse was my baby that I ended up not being able to protect? Who died all alone without her mother there to hold her?”

She starts pacing, breathing heavily.

“Do you want me to tell you how I once told a scared little boy I’d tie him to a tree and let the walkers eat him just so he would leave me alone and not be around the fucking  _ curse _ that I am, and yet he got ripped to shreds anyway?” 

She approaches the bed, standing right before him, wetting her bottom lip. 

“Should I tell you,” she says in a harsh whisper. “About how Lizzie killed her little sister with a knife I taught her to use, and how I took her into the yard and told her to look at the flowers while I shot her point blank in the head?” Daryl’s surprise must be evident, because she smiles humorlessly and says, “Yeah, you didn’t know that one, did you? You didn’t know that when Lizzie died she didn’t have any bites. No wounds. She was in peak physical health. But I killed her anyway, Daryl. Lord knows Tyrese wouldn’t do it. He just gave me the go-ahead and stayed in the house with Judith while I blew a child’s brains out onto the grass.” 

“Carol—”

“No, you wanted me to talk, so I’m talking.” Her whole body is shaking. “Every child that has ever been mine is dead. I am the common denominator. I am lethal, and it doesn’t matter if they’re the good guys or the bad guys—when people are around me they die. And I’m not letting you die, Daryl. I’m not.” 

"You ain't a curse," Daryl says. 

"Then why are they all gone?" Carol breathes, tears coming faster now, and all Daryl wants is to brush them away. He reaches out to her, but she takes a step back. "No," she says.

"I still wanna be here for you."

"You already tried, and look how that went. I took her from you. I didn't mean to, but I did, and you don't get to forgive me just because you think you should out of some sense of loyalty. Tear into me. Get angry. Tell me to fuck off so I can get my stuff and go."

Daryl has to resist rolling his eyes. 'I took her from you.' There she goes with that junior high playground bullshit again, like any of this has to do with if he  _ like _ likes Connie. As if this has nothing to do with how deeply she's hurting and how deeply he wants to help her, because she's right, he almost died, and now he remembers how big he loves her and isn't soon to forget.

He says, "I ain't tellin' you to fuck off. And I ain't lettin' you leave."

"It's not up to you where I go."

"Then it ain't up to you where I follow."

They hover at this impasse, shooting daggers at each other. Carol wipes her face and takes a deep breath. He can see her preparing her next big polemic in order to push him far enough away that she has time to escape.

"Daryl—" she starts, but she doesn't finish her sentence, because in one swift movement Daryl gets up off the bed and into her space. He cups her face, and before she can protest he's pressing his lips to hers. 

They stand that way for a beat. Then another.

Her eyes are wide when he leans back to look at her; scared and devastated and wanting all concurrently. She opens her mouth to speak.

"Shut up," Daryl says, and kisses her again.

It takes a moment for her to respond, and when she does it feels reluctant. But then, slowly, her arms snake up the length of his torso and drape around his neck, and that's when he feels her give in. She tilts her head for him to get a better angle, and parts her lips for him. He slides his tongue against hers lazily, running his hands down her back until resting them on her hips. He tugs her forward, eradicating completely the distance she tried to put between them as they come flush together.

Breaking the kiss, Daryl rests his forehead against hers as he walks her to the bed. He lays her down tenderly, and she rests on a pillow, watching him. He climbs into bed too and hovers over her, brushing his knuckles down her cheek.

"You're hurt," she reminds him softly, noticing how he's favoring one knee. 

"I'll be okay," he says, because he really couldn't care less, but she shakes her head.

"Lie down," she says, shifting to make room. "Let me."

Daryl hesitates only a moment before settling down on his back, hoping she won't run. 

She doesn't. Instead, she leans down and kisses him sweetly, taking hold of his hand and placing it on her navel. Daryl bunches the fabric between his fingers, and then uses both hands to work the buttons undone. He makes each one come open with such delicacy that he feels like one of those people who open gifts by carefully peeling every piece of tape off and then folding the wrapping paper neatly once it's removed, because the unveiling is just as important as the prize underneath.

He helps her shrug off the shirt entirely, and she reaches around to undo the clasp of her bra. Slipping it off, suddenly she's before him, nude from the waist up. Parts of her skin are marred by years upon years of violence, but there is no inch of her flesh that he doesn't worship. He feels her up, taking time to get to know every texture of her torso, from the smoothness of her belly, to the roughness of her scars, to the tautness of her nipples as he brushes his thumbs over them, making her sigh.

"I love you," he says. She shuts her eyes and more tears dribble down the bridge of her nose.

"You shouldn't," she says. "I wish you didn't."

"Hey," he says gently. "Look at me."

With what seems like tremendous effort, she opens her eyes and meets his gaze.

"I want you to love her," she says. "Or anyone. Anyone else. Don't love me. Please."

"Not up to me, sweetheart," Daryl says, running his fingers through her hair. She leans into the touch. "I love you, and that's why I need you to stay."

"And I love you. That's why I need you to let me go."

Daryl sits up and kisses Carol long and hard.

"No," he says when he pulls away, and Carol gives a helpless sad little laugh.

"I don't know how to be better," she says. "And I can't risk you getting hurt any worse on my account."

"You don't have to fix everything overnight. Just let me help you. Please? Let's get through this together."

"I'm so angry all the time, Daryl. I'm angry and I hurt."

"I know, but lemme tell you somethin'. You don't feel that way 'cause you're a bad person. You feel that way 'cause you love so big you can't hardly handle the pain that comes with it. That's what it's all about. It's about how big you can love."

"If love hurts this bad then it's cruel to let you love me."

"Nah. 'Cause the only thing that hurts worse is not bein' able to love at all." Daryl nuzzles his head against her belly and places a kiss in between her breasts. "C'mere," he says softly, and pulls her down.

They undress each other with the same care Daryl showed with her shirt. She sheds tears all over again at all his new bruises from this latest fight, and he kisses them away, telling her not to cry. That he's okay. That he's grateful for the clarity his brush with death has given him.

He says this all without words. Instead he inscribes the messages with his lips along her collarbone and breasts, with his hand slipping down between her legs and sliding along her wet folds until he finds her entrance and presses two fingers inside her. She pants softly, running her own hands over his bare flesh aimlessly, caught up in the sensations he's provoking in her body. He encircles her clitoris with the pad of his thumb; a featherlight, rhythmic motion, while his fingers still pulse against her walls.

She cums with a shudder, crying even though he told her not to. She kisses him so tenderly, even as she expands and contracts wildly around his hand. And god is it satisfying to finally be able to give her something good.

Once she's recovered, she straddles his hips like she belongs there, and Daryl holds her gaze as she lowers herself down, making small noises as she stretches to fit all of him inside her. 

At the first roll of her hips, Daryl feels that same feeling he did on the floor of the shop; that overwhelming understanding of how big he loves her, and maybe that means it's not only death that reveals such truths. Maybe there are moments like this littered all throughout a lifetime. Not that it matters. He doesn't need revelations, he just needs her, and while she rides him like she's reminding herself of all the good parts of love, he knows that he has her. Finally, she's his.

He lets go with her name on his lips, and she swallows it with a long, languid kiss. They stay that way as long as they can, until he can no longer stay inside her. They lay side-by-side then, legs intertwined and hands lazily exploring parts of each other's bodies they may have missed.

"Go to sleep," Carol tells him when he yawns. He brushes his thumb over her lips and she kisses it.

"Will you still be here when I wake up?" he asks, and she nods. And she means it. He knows when she's bullshitting him.

"I'm scared, though," she admits a few minutes later, after he thought the conversation was over.

"That's okay," Daryl says, burrowing in closer to her, as if trying to become one. "Just as long as you stay. All the rest we can figure out together."

"Are you sure you want to love me?" she asks.

"Yes. And even if I didn't I wouldn't have a choice."

"It's hard to love this big, Daryl."

"I know, sweetheart," he says, pressing his lips to her pulse point. "But it's worth it."

  
  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> yet another "had feelings about the episode and wrote porn on my phone about it" oneshot. you know how it goes
> 
> deuces,  
> -diz


End file.
